I've decided to take you on a journey through my thoughts while reading "Servants of the Map." From the title, I thought it might be some weird, satanic story about people who worship something that is either an actual map or that goes by the name of map. Then, once the story started, I thought it would be an intriguing story of discovery about the man who was found dead at the beginning. Then, I realized I would have to focus most of my attention on deciding if I thought Max would go back to Clara in the end. And I thought he would. Then he might his mistress and I lost all hope. I thought that he was too good a man to not tell his wife of this saucy relationship, and that he would ruin his marriage over it. Then I thought of his children. He hadn't even met his second daughter yet! I thought surely he would have to return to meet her. When he decided to stay on to study botany, I lost all hope. He would never find enough knowledge to satisfy himself enough to return home.
How can one know when one has learned enough?
Max obviously valued the quest for knowledge quite a lot, and he was willing to jeopardize his relationship with Clara for it. When I read the last paragraph about him triangulating the points, I thought that meant he was moving on to a new horizon that eventually would include his family. But I didn't realize until class on Monday that he meant he would wait for his wife to interpret his words. He found a way to make a commitment without actually committing.
I agree with your thoughts in your blog. I think it is interesting to think about how we as people triangulate and interpret each others words in such different ways. Once sentence or phrase can have a different meaning to everyone that reads it.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading about how you processed the story as you were reading it, as you call “mind mapping.” I think that’s part of the fun of reading, guessing what’s going to happen next and seeing whether you are right or wrong. In some cases, you are so intrigued with a story that you can’t put the book down until you reach the end. Sometimes you maybe disappointed when you realize you falsely predict the ending, but I find that I’m more disappointed when I’m right because it’s no fun if you can already predict what’s going to happen in the end before it actually happens.
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